Ghosts
by wouldtheywriteasongforyou
Summary: People have their secrets for a reason. He was never supposed to find out hers. — the story of the diadem, the witch, and the walls of Hogwarts.


**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer: ****I took artistic liberties with the medieval era.**  


Written for the HPFC Acrostic-y Competition "The Vanishin**_g _**Glass" [ghosts]; The Ghosts Challenge "23. Second chance"; Star Light, Star Bright challenge "star" [deceased person]; Cinema Competition "The Lovely Bones"; Twelve Days of Christmas Challenge "Level One"; Off the Block Competition "Freestyle Easy" [write OTP]

13 February 2014. Word Count: 1,990

**"I did what had to be done."  
**

* * *

**Ghosts**

[-]

"Go away," she bit out. "I do not wish to speak with you."

"Lena, please see reason, my love. Your mother is dying. Won't you honour her last desire to be reunited once again?"

Helena Ravenclaw sneered at the Baron who had travelled to Albania only to imprison her in Rowena Ravenclaw's shadow once more. "She does not care for me," Helena hissed. "She only wishes to see you and I wed before she takes her last breath."

"Is that such a fault?"

She eyed him with barely veiled disgust. He didn't understand how much a mother could love her child and that such love could be blinding to other's imperfections. Helena knew that her mother only wanted was best for her daughter, but wisdom limited Rowena's brilliance to logic and reason. Her mother did not make choices based on ethics or morals.

Death had clouded the elder Ravenclaw's mind. Baron Slytherinson was a bloodthirsty man whose avarice made him a self-centred aristocrat. The Baron had no personal interest in Helena save for the fact that she was Rowena's only heir. He may speak of love and sweet nothings but Helena wasn't as easily fooled as her mother who only saw the prestige, honour, and wealth that the Baron boasted.

"What art thou doing in Albania, anyway?" the Baron asked, looking around in revulsion at the forest.

"I _was_ hiding," Helena stated bitterly.

"Come now, love. Is marriage truly _such _an abhorrence to your delicate, beautiful mind?"

"Leave me alone," was her final answer.

The Baron frowned. "I shall never," he vowed.

"I refuse to marry," Helena said with a proud arrogance. "And certainly not to _you_."

A fire flashed in the Baron's eyes. "Men do not admire such candour in a woman," he hissed out. "Consider yourself fortunate that I am more forgiving than most."

She scowled. "I am not a puppet whose strings are yours to control," she spat acrimoniously. "If you cannot value my independence as a maiden, I shudder to think of how you will regard me as your wife."

"You would be a queen amongst queens," the Baron promised in all sincerity.

"I have no desire to be placed upon a throne," she retorted icily, dousing the flames of passion licking at his words.

The Baron arched an eyebrow. "Oh? So why doth thee hath your mother's crown for thyself?"

Helena blushed and looked away. "Her diadem is none of your business, Slytherinson."

He stepped closer to her and held out an expectant hand. "Lady Ravenclaw personally requested for you to return and for the diadem to be restored to its rightful place. Hand it over, Lena."

"I won't." Helena was proud of stealing her mother's most treasured possession. She was not about to willingly undo her accomplishment by giving back the diadem.

"You wish me to disrespect the orders of Lady Ravenclaw?" he demanded. "And in turn, slander my family name?"

Helena huffed and took another step backwards. Her back was up against a tree, but still, the Baron advanced menacingly upon her with that predatory glint in his dark eyes. "No," she said defiantly. "Just tell her that you could not find me."

"I, the best tracker in all of Britannia, was unable to find you, an insignificant little girl?"

She rolled her eyes. "You sure know how to charm a lady, Slytherinson."

Abruptly, the Baron sank down to one knee. "Marry me, Helena," he pleaded. "I beg of you to stop thinking about your silly morals and honour your mother's and my simple wish."

The man was a bloody idiot! He was so blinded by his personal wants that he did not realise he sounded like a narcissist and hypocritical to other people. The Baron's logic was completely twisted, and Helena feared that there was no hope in escaping his deluded fantasy anymore.

"I – I cannot," she whispered.

"You leave me no choice," he murmured like a lover would to their beloved. Before she could fully register what was happening, the blade of the knife dug its way into her heart the same way a wedding ring chokes freedom out if its owners' finger.

[-]

Helena looked down at herself. What had she become? It was dark out but by the light of the moon she thought she saw herself . . . _floating_. How odd. The last thing she could remember was pain, such excruciating metallic pain, radiating out from her chest. Wasn't she in a forest? There had been a man with her . . . a man whose name she could not remember but filled her heart with an aching uneasiness. And her mother's diadem! Or rather, it was _her_ diadem now. _But where was it?_ (And where was she?)

"_Merlin_," she swore when she bumped up against _something_ in the dark. Instead of bouncing off the object like humans normally did, she had passed through the thing. It felt like an unpleasant discomfort in her side but nothing too life-threatening. In her shock, though, she instinctively placed her right hand over heart and gasped. She no longer had a heartbeat! If Helena were still alive, she could have fainted at that realisation. As it was, she had to settle for another dramatic gasp (this time, she noted air was no longer crucial and that she only breathed out of habit).

It didn't take Helena Ravenclaw that long to realise she was now a ghost of the person she had once been.

[-]

She returned to Hogwarts empty-handed with a heart weighed down with remorse and no idea as to where her mother's diadem was. She knocked on the castle door, resigned and ready to turn herself in for her treacherous acts of betrayal against her mother.

The front door opened and out stepped Salazar Slytherin. "Oh," he sneered in displeasure. "It's you."

"Hello, Lord Slytherin," she responded cordially. She never did like the Slytherin Founder or the son he had raised but her mother had raised her to be mindful of her elders. "I am here to see my mother."

"She's _dead_, you ungrateful pathetic girl," Slytherin spat out in undisguised fury. "A hundred years since this day. Twas only a sunset that had passed after you left when she did as well. Her ailment was a broken heart."

Helena only stared at him uncomprehendingly. A century had already passed? That couldn't be. And her mother, oh _Merlin_, what had Helena done?

"I am dead, too," she stated unnecessarily. "Doth thee think I could find her immortal form in the world of spirits in which I dwell?"

Slytherin shook his head. The wrinkles in his face were drooping and his hair had turned silver with age. He no longer looked like the noble aristocrat Helena remembered but his haughtiness was a trait time could not erase. "Methinks Lady Ravenclaw passed into the world of the dead in hopes of finding you there too."

It seemed as if Helena was always destined to make mistakes. "I am so very sorry," she whispered.

Slytherin looked at her coldly. "Tis not the only life thou harmed with thy actions."

"What do you mean?"

A ghost floated through the door. He wore blood and chains across his body as if it were a trophy to be proud of. Though she could not recall his name when she had first gained consciousness in her ghost form, she immediately knew who he was as he glided over to her with a tender smile on his face.

"Hello, my love."

[-]

The centuries came and went the same way as a tide ebbs and flows, weathering away the details in her memories. Still, she could never forget her thievery of the lost diadem or her darling mother or even the Baron, for he refreshed the tragedy and short longevity of her human life with every chance their paths crossed in the hallowed halls of Hogwarts.

Helena was titled the ghost of her House as she felt it was her duty to oversee the progress of her mother's vision of the school she had dreamt up. The Baron carried out the legacy of his father's name with pride as well, and they watched over the students of their respective Houses with critical eyes.

"The Heir of Slytherin is ambitious and bright but I fear that darkness splits his soul as well," the Baron confided to Helena.

She ignored his whispers as she usually did, for she thought he was propositioning her once again, and she had no time even in death for such foolishly silly things such as marriage. (She then thinks to herself that perhaps she should have married him and then taken her life because _till death do us part_ would have been very effective as a restraining order against the Baron.)

[-]

He found her drifting helplessly about in Ravenclaw Tower. Almost a decade of centuries had passed since Helena's treason to her mother, and not for the first time Helena wished that she had not been such a thoughtless conceited girl in her youth.

"You are the Grey Lady, are you not?" he inquired, politely alerting her of his presence.

She kept her back to him and continued on staring out of the window of the tower. "That is not my name," she responded bitterly.

"My apologies," he soothed in a voice of honey. He carefully continued to approach her. "I was reading through Hogwarts: A History and noticed that today's date coincided with the passing of your mother. I thought you might enjoy some company or moral support."

"That is terribly kind of you, but I am afraid I must decline," she responded in a clipped tone.

He did not leave. He came to stand next to her at the window and studied the Hogwarts grounds from their vantage point. "I respect your mother very much," he said quietly. "Such brilliance and architectural skill she must have possessed to design such a magical place as Hogwarts."

"She was the best of the best," Helena agreed but did not elaborate.

"Was it solely her brain?" the Hogwarts student pressed on. "Or did she have help?"

Without thinking, Helena instinctively replied: "She had a diadem that would grant its wearer enhanced wisdom. It was her prized possession but I stole it from her." She turned to the Hogwarts student curiously and noticed the Slytherin green tie noosed around his neck. "Surely the textbooks would have mentioned that?"

The Slytherin smiled that chilling serpentine-smile which Helena vaguely remembered adorning Lord Slytherin's face from time-to-time. "Yes but the books do not say much more. I wanted a first-hand account; Professor Binns would be absolutely thrilled if my end-of-term thesis paper uncovered hidden Hogwarts history."

Helena disagreed – she did not think that Professor Binns was truly thrilled by anything – but she decided to humour this Slytherin charmer. "The diadem is lost, hence its name the _lost_ diadem. I do not know of its location."

He seemed to accept this as her final answer on the subject. "All right, that's understandable. So tell me about your death, then."

"Well, I was running away from Hogwarts with the diadem and I thought the Albanian forest would be a nice remote location . . . ."

When she heard of what Tom Riddle Jr. had done to her mother's diadem in the following decades, she hated herself for inadvertently betraying her mother's memory once more. She vowed to never let another student get past her guard again.

[-]

Of course, there came another time when Helena Ravenclaw had to break her promise.

The Baron floated up to her as Harry Potter left the corridor. "Lena, my love, has thee finally spoketh of thy ghosts in your past?" he inquired gently.

She closed her eyes as the walls of the once-invincible castle in her mother's dreams came crashing down all around her. "I did what had to be done."

[-]


End file.
